LAST LAUGH

Chocolates disappear when sleepwalker is around.

Who ate the holiday sweets?

Pat Brennan, my father-in-law, had a holiday tradition of placing several boxes of chocolates under the tree for everyone to enjoy. On Christmas morning in 1980, we woke to discover that the chocolates had already been rifled through. Everyone declared their innocence.

My wife, Olivia, accused me of eating the candy, on the grounds that I was a notorious chocoholic (which was true). She also said

I was capable of doing anything in my sleep, as I was known to sleepwalk. I accepted that I was guilty as charged, and from that year on, Olivia’s—and later our children’s—retelling of the story was as popular with the family as our traditional Christmas Eve reading of

The Night Before Christmas.

Many years later, we were dealing with the grim news that Olivia had cancer. But she still enjoyed the custom of recounting how a sleepwalker had scarfed the Christmas chocolates.

As our son Christopher brought it up once again, my wife cuddled up to me for what I thought was going to be a romantic moment. She leaned in and whispered,

“I ate the chocolates!”

The truth came out as Olivia explained to everyone that, while her charge against me was funny the first year, the private joke became hilarious as the years passed. After decades of torturing me, she wanted to reveal the truth because she didn’t want the joke to be lost.

Olivia died a few months later following a four-year illness, but the story with a twist was her gift to our family, who gratefully carry on her sense of humor.